The River Project | Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration (STAGE)

The Art of Questionable Provenance
Bend, Fold, Break
Curiosity: The Making of a Scientist
Entanglement
The Information Palace
Molecular Gastronomy
Quantum Games
The River Project
Symmetry

STAGE began to explore The River Project in mid-2020, inspired by PME Professor Supratik Guha's Water-to-Cloud (W2C) project in India. Using sensor technology to measure the health of India's rivers (aka the Water), the W2C team monitored pollution in real-time. The data, mapped onto satellite images, provided color-coded visualizations (heat maps) that are easy to interpret through an open-access platform (aka the Cloud) available to the broader public. W2C also identified trends for the spread of pollution over time and area by applying the data to machine learning models.

In tandem with the scientific study, Professor Surajit Sarkar's team at Ambedkar University Delhi's Centre for Community Knowledge has been investigating the socio-economic impact of river pollution by interviewing riverine communities to collect their past, present and future experiences and expectations of life along India's waterways.

STAGE's goal is to immerse ourselves in both data sets (the scientific research and the interviews) to create and develop a human story about declining water quality, scientific means of addressing water pollution, and the people whose lives are linked to the rivers.

The River Project Collaborators

Supratik Guha
PME Professor of Molecular Engineering
Senior Advisor, Argonne National Laboratory
PI Water-to-Cloud (W2C)